[OSM-legal-talk] ODbL "virality" questions

[Andrew Turner]

> On 2 Oct 2009, at 18:06, Matt Amos wrote:
>
>> hi legals,
>>
>> i've come across a couple of interesting questions / use-cases for the
>> ODbL and wider discussion. it basically reduces to whether we want the
>> ODbL to have viral (GPL-like) behaviour, or whether it should be less
>> viral (LGPL-like). we've discussed this at an LWG meeting and the
>> general feeling was that the LGPL-like behaviour would be more
>> desirable, as it would allow wider use of OSM by third parties.
>> however, it was felt that a wider discussion is necessary.
>>
>> first case: a site wishes to use OSM data as a basis for
>> non-geographic data. the example used is a review side, like
>> beerintheevening.com or tripadvisor.com. they might want to use OSM as
>> the source of geographic data by linking its reviews to OSM node IDs
>> (or lat/lons taken from the OSM data). under a GPL-like interpretation
>> of the ODbL, this would "taint" the database, requiring its release.
>> considering that the records in the database may contain private
>> information (IP/email address of the reviewer) this may mean that the
>> site decides not to use OSM, because releasing the DB would violate
>> their own privacy policy.
>>
>> second case: OSM data is downloaded to a handheld device (e.g:
>> iphone). this is likely (given the screen size of the device) to be an
>> insubstantial amount. the data is locally used for reference when
>> entering other information (e.g: abovesaid reviews). the reviews are
>> uploaded to a non-OSM site, linked to the OSM-derived node ID or
>> lat/lon. if many people do this, does that constitute repeated
>> extraction and therefore require release of the non-OSM DB under the
>> ODbL? i.e: can 3rd party sites use OSM IDs or lat/lons from OSM as
>> keys into their database?
>

I've had these very same questions. The in-person responses have
typically been "of course that's ok to do without releasing the review
data" but never in any way that I thought would make a large company
feel comfortable.

I understand that typically copyright law like this is at the behest
of 'best practices' and prior cases - but obviously this is not the
model OSM follows in general and is in fact trying to break out of.

Really, it is akin to linking to a URL (if you consider any node in
OSM is a Resource and could have a URI). My linking to a Wikipedia
definition of "Map" does not change the copyright of my material.

What can we do to make it very clear if this is acceptable use of OSM?
Can we make it very clear that the equivalent of 'linking' to OSM data
that doesn't alter it (or effectively replace primary data within OSM)
does not virally release all data linked to it?

Thanks,
Andrew